Phlegm food, fast
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I don’t know about you, but I hate, loathe, detest going through the fast food drive-thru. I have a few good reasons for this. First of all, it doesn’t matter if there is one or twenty cars in line, inevitably, I will still wait the same length of time which is long enough to induce the urge to kill somebody but not long enough to get the gun loaded. Usually, that’s because I pull up just seconds behind Soccer Mom in her super-extended monster of an SUV, which is loaded to capacity with the entire team, none of which have on seat belts or know what they want. Is it necessary to remind anyone that the McDonald’s Menu has not changed since they opened the doors in 1955? So, I am forced to inhale two tons of her radioactive exhaust for the next twenty minutes while she stares dumbfounded at the wide variety of children’s selections: Hamburger, Cheeseburger, or Chicken Nuggets.
However, the worst part of the drive-thru experience has to be the ordering process. Where do these restaurants purchase their speaker systems from? My $6 clock radio from the Dollar General sounds like attending a live rock-n-roll concert compared to the sound-system at the local Wendy’s. And why is it that you can always hear them, blasting at one million fractured decibels, but they can never hear you? That is, unless you say something ignorant like my husband likes to do, “Can I get a Miller Lite?” “Sir, we don’t serve beer here.” “I said, ‘a medium sprite’,” he clucks, as he doubles over in laughter. I can’t wait until that gets old.
The worst drive-thru experience I have had of late was a visit through the Southaven Burger King drive-thru. Anyone who frequents this particular store should probably stop reading now. I was with my husband and daughter, running errands on a hot day, and craving a nice cold ICEE, which Burger King is known for having. After the wait-n-shout routine ordering process as described above, we pull around to the first window to pay for our food.
There were two people standing there, both with headsets on. One older lady who closely resembled a corpse, and another young lady probably in her mid-teens. It was clear the older woman was training the younger. She stood behind her, spitting out orders along with bits of the chicken tenders she was eating. The young lady, intent on studying the register keys, quickly informed us of our total, then went back to pecking away the next person’s order item by item. The Queen of the Dead, seeing her apprentice was overwhelmed, popped the remainder of her chicken tender between her rotted teeth, wiped her bony fingers on her stained uniform, and reached out and grabbed my husband’s debit card from his hand. She handed it to her coworker, hacked a death loogie into her hand, then handed back our card. My husband and I simultaneously stared at her in shock for a moment, then at each other, then at my daughter, and back to the offender. We were speechless until we were safely behind the buffer of a rolled window.
“Oh my God!” I said, “Did you see that?”
“That was disgusting,”my husband echoed my thoughts. Pause. “That was disgusting!”
We pulled up to the next window without much time to form a unanimous decision about how to handle the situation. Before we knew it or could react, Living Dead Girl was handing us our drinks. I’m sure she had time to wash her hands during that 5 second time warp. We decided that we would ask for a refund. When the woman returned to the window with our food, we asked to see the manager. The window was slammed, and after about five minutes, a rather plump young woman waddled over from the inside register.
“Yo fries will be ready…” she began but my husband cut her off. He asked if she was the manager to which she replied, yes.
“We just want a refund,” he stated and then proceeded to give her the play by play of what occurred in the drive through. She clearly did not see the problem. Half-way through his story and quite unexpectedly, she said, “Here he come,” then turned to walk away. We were puzzled. She was replaced by a tall man with a clean, collared shirt and a bright gold smile. After a little investigating, we learned that he was the store manager, and she was only the assistant manager. He seemed to be the most intelligent of the bunch, although the standard was not set very high. He blinked at us over and over, clearly through the fog of a crack trip, as he stuttered some apology and mumbled some nonsense about reviewing the camera footage. We gave back our bubonic plague infested drinks and took our money, peeling tires out of the drive-thru.
Just keep in mind, the next time you come into contact with the village idiot in the drive-thru: they usually put the smartest of the bunch in charge of the money. The other poor, uneducated souls can’t be trusted with anything above wrapping the burgers and dropping fries into grease. Sometimes, I wonder how these people find their way to work in the first place. Now, I try to stick to drive-thru windows where employees at least speak proper English and cross my fingers that is enough assurance that they know how to perform proper hygiene. Chick-Fil-A is usually a good bet, as well as most Sonics. However, that just means you have to park next to Soccer Mom and try not to notice the giant hole forming in the ozone layer right above her Sports Utility Bus.
